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I don't mind them tagging my stuff as long as the tags are accurate. By and large it seems quite clever but I have seen a photo of some marram grass, and one of a tulip, tagged as "Food". Also a pile of logs, and a castle, tagged as "Landscape: Rock". I'd give them 8 out of 10 for effort.

You made a point - I made a counter-point. Nothing more to it than that...

I actually just went in and checked 'em out. And they get some of them wrong. But they get a lot of them right. And in doing a search of my photo-stream, I was able to find stuff a LOT more easily than I had been before because of the number of tags they got right. I remember having a lot of trouble finding a couple of shots I did of a folding bike of mine not long ago. So I did a search on bicycle and it pulled up everything in my stream that appeared to have a bike in it. A few of them didn't have anything of the sort, but there among them were the ones I'd had so much trouble finding recently. I did a search on "animal" and it pulled up a number of shots of my dog and one of a cat I took in Italy a few years ago that I've also had trouble finding quickly. So far, I'm good. I've always been too lazy and disorganized to use tags, whether on Flickr or in Lightroom. If someone else wants to do it for me and get's them right most of the time, I'm good with that.

Perhaps someday they'll do something nefarious with them and I'll be pissed too. For now, I see it as another convenience. But this is just me. I don't really mind Google flashing ads at me of products I'd shown a recent interest in. I don't think it's ever moved me into an impulse buy of something I'd already been checking out, but it's occasionally showed me a related product I wasn't aware of that I DID eventually buy as a result of Google making me aware of it. If the NSA is tracking my political speech, I'm pissed. Google reaching into my data to pull tracking information and tickets I might need to scan to the fore has been nothing but helpful so far. As well as showing me products along the lines of what I've been looking into.

We may just be wired differently. And, Paul, I'm not objecting to you making a point - not in the least. I just didn't personally feel the same way.

Legend

I was a bit puzzled by it when I first noticed. I wondered if it was a suggestion but no, it's done it for me. It doesn't seem to be able to add much to mine except indoor or outdoor and depth of field so I'm not complaining yet. I dislike the general camera roll layout much more !

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I thought the flickr robot tags were somewhere between weird and dopey at first. But one or two seemed downright puzzling - when the robots have called certain photos of mine 'surreal' - which had nothing of the 'surreal' about them at all, as far as I could distinguish. Being a longtime fan of speculative science fiction, as well as a writer myself, my next question is: how does a supposedly 'smart' robot (aka AI/Artificial Intelligence entity) decide that something is 'surreal'?

That question raises others: can 'machines' really think or feel?

This is the subject matter of a lot of great scifi and speculative fiction. Including most of Philip K. Dick's work. And also a handful of cult scifi movies, including 'Blade Runner' and 'Her' (which won an Oscar for best screenplay, 2 years ago). Thinking about this and debating it is one of the best ways to waste time creatively that I know.

Back to the present thread, though: for me, the jury's still out - I don't quite see flickr robots' auto-tagging as 'totalitarianism' yet. Maybe a little closer to 'Big Brother is watching you'. But on the other hand, I can also see some of the tags may be useful to those of us who are occasionally tag-challenged, as Ray sort of pointed out.

Then again, I'm still basically an old-school analog photographer, and after decades of never 'sharing' my film work, this brave new world of digital photography and photo sharing websites is still a little like Disneyland to me: a lot of fun but not quite real. But I love the idea that there are photo websites where I can get feedback on my images from other photographers. On the whole, for me, flickr has been pretty satisfying, so I haven't really minded its weirdnesses - manipulations - quirks - foibles - or even its totalitarianist or Big-Brother moves. But I also suspect that iPernity where I recently opened an account, may have quite a few serious pluses, and possibly some oddities or minuses as well.

The best part for me is the idea that all of this is playing out into what the brilliant Canadian philosopher/futurist Marshall McLuhan first called 'the Global Village' decades ago, when he predicted that we all (humans, around the globe) would be linked together in real and intimate ways that would be village-like communities....between people at opposite ends of the globe.

The Global Photographer's Village. It's all come true - and no matter which direction we go (totalitarianism - or freedom - or joyful anarchy) I want to enjoy the ride.

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And speaking of likes and dislikes, and differences between flickr & ipernity, I have two more quick short questions for the ipernity experts here:

1. In my albeit brief experiences navigating through ipernity pages and groups, everything seems to load much more quickly than in comparable flickr pages/groups. Is this just my imagination, or indeed does the ipernity system software/algorithms render photos and pages more quickly than flickr?

2. Larger photo views - what Flickr used to call 'Lightbox'. In the current flickr, this can be accessed by either clicking the tiny double-arrows in the upper right hand corner of the screen, or simply the letter 'L' (for Lightbox). Both are easily accessible, so for me this = a Draw between flickr/ipernity. But to see an actual 'fullscreen' view seems easier in ipernity than flickr: in ipernity you click the tiny 'fullscreen icon' in the upper right-hand corner and it expands the photo to a beautiful fullscreen view (against a black background). In flickr unless I'm mistaken, the only way to get into real 'fullscreen' is to view an entire album or photo stream and click on the 'slideshow' icon, which then begins a fullscreen Ken Burns-style slideshow of every photo in the group. Definite Win for ipernity, unless I'm missing something?

My apologies if this is in any way hijacking the original theme of the thread. My hope is that these questions are tangentially related - since the concept of 'totalitarianism' might be applied, by extension, to the ease of use or lack thereof of certain basic features of both flickr and ipernity - which are important to photographers.

Legend

You're right about ipernity in more ways than one. It's a French-originated site so the ethos behind it is different. There is a strong sense of community in ipernity that I never saw in Flickr, and more respect for both privacy and individuality. There were bitter arguments in their forums about a year ago when there was a move to make images searchable by Google; a vociferous group saw it as an invasion of privacy.

Top Veteran

In flickr unless I'm mistaken, the only way to get into real 'fullscreen' is to view an entire album or photo stream and click on the 'slideshow' icon, which then begins a fullscreen Ken Burns-style slideshow of every photo in the group. Definite Win for ipernity, unless I'm missing something?

Yes, I think you still have to start a slideshow in flickr to get fullscreen (that is without using the browser's fullscreen - F11 in firefox).
But at least they abandoned the forced Ken-Burns zooming in their latest update. Now we can finally look at the photos again in their slideshow...

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~@¿@~

Get to the batch organizer. at the bottom panel, click on select all, then drag them into the top pane. Then hit up the "permissions" drop down menu. Choose the top selection "who can see, comment, etc" and there you will find the option to make them all private.

Thanks for that, Luke, I might do that tomorrow. Does it make a difference to linked photos? I mean, do they disappear and you have to use a new link? I don't think I can be fussed if thats the case, I'll leave things as they are.

Legend

It will make linked photos disappear (even though you can link to private photos......when you switch permissions {in either direction} the linked photos will disappear). While it is a bummer, I think linked photos aren't seen very often after about the first week or so. The internet is all about the current moment.

Regular

I'm not a professional, I upload my photographs to share them with like-minded people. I prefer a free hosting service so if Flickr want to tag my photographs, what's the big deal? You should see the data Google collects and stores from your every move on-line... And that's only the veritable tip of the iceberg.

Legend

I'm not a professional, I upload my photographs to share them with like-minded people. I prefer a free hosting service so if Flickr want to tag my photographs, what's the big deal? You should see the data Google collects and stores from your every move on-line... And that's only the veritable tip of the iceberg.

I kind of feel the same way. I'm not sure I get what's nefarious about this. How do they use the tags to "monetize"? If it's just a matter of making the site an easier place for people to search for photos of a particular type, and thereby enable them to sell more advertising, I don't have any problem with that. Doing something useful or doing something better is generally rewarded by making more money as a result. I don't see them doing anything that somehow invades my privacy or steals anything from me. Maybe it will allow more people to see a few of my photos if they come up by searching for some of the tags they've applied? There's no downside to that for me that I can think of. If I don't want something generally seen, I just make it private when I put it up. If I'm missing something and someone can explain the dark side of this, I'm all ears. But on the surface, I don't get the outrage - not saying there's no good reason for it, but not one readily apparent to me...

Legend

Yes, I think you still have to start a slideshow in flickr to get fullscreen (that is without using the browser's fullscreen - F11 in firefox).
But at least they abandoned the forced Ken-Burns zooming in their latest update. Now we can finally look at the photos again in their slideshow...

When you're on a photo's main page, all you have to do is hit the "L" key (for "large"?) and it toggles into a full screen view, or I guess full window view. It doesn't actually go to the full screen, but as large as your window is, it will fill to the limits of the menu bar and stuff at the top...

Legend

I kind of feel the same way. I'm not sure I get what's nefarious about this. How do they use the tags to "monetize"? If it's just a matter of making the site an easier place for people to search for photos of a particular type, and thereby enable them to sell more advertising, I don't have any problem with that. Doing something useful or doing something better is generally rewarded by making more money as a result. I don't see them doing anything that somehow invades my privacy or steals anything from me. Maybe it will allow more people to see a few of my photos if they come up by searching for some of the tags they've applied? There's no downside to that for me that I can think of. If I don't want something generally seen, I just make it private when I put it up. If I'm missing something and someone can explain the dark side of this, I'm all ears. But on the surface, I don't get the outrage - not saying there's no good reason for it, but not one readily apparent to me...

Ray, it would be fair to say that your views on this and mine are poles apart. If I have created something I own it, lock, stock and barrel. The Flickr monetisation model is anathema to me.

For the record I am responsible for customer experience ("CX") solution provision across Europe for a tier 1 global systems integrator. In my day job I advise major enterprises how to monetise their multi-channel digital interactions. In other words I am no luddite. This is not about progress it is about the way Flickr asserts their rights to use your - or my - work for their financial benefit.

Legend

Ray, it would be fair to say that your views on this and mine are poles apart. If I have created something I own it, lock, stock and barrel. The Flickr monetisation model is anathema to me.

For the record I am responsible for customer experience ("CX") solution provision across Europe for a tier 1 global systems integrator. In my day job I advise major enterprises how to monetise their multi-channel digital interactions. In other words I am no luddite. This is not about progress it is about the way Flickr asserts their rights to use your - or my - work for their financial benefit.

I accept that we're poles apart, but I simply don't understand what Flickr is doing that you object to that MAKES us poles apart. In what way is Flickr taking ownership of my photographs? I'm not saying they're NOT - I just don't understand how they are...

They provide a service to host and display people's photographs on their site. We retain the rights to those photographs, to any sales from those photographs, etc. We also have the ability to make those photographs public or private or semi-private (ie, just friends or family). How is Flickr monetizing our work other than to sell advertising to the site in general? How does adding tags to our photographs make them more money other than by making it easier to search for public photos of particular subjects? I understand it adds it's goofy little off-shoots like "Explore" which also lets the bots sort through publicly posted photos for special attention and maybe that drives some additional amount of ad sales. Is that what you're objecting to?

And how is ipernity different? When I log onto ipernity, one of the first things I see is "Explore popular photographs", which seems somewhat similar to Flickr's Explore section, although perhaps those photos are selected by people views rather than by bots? I can search ipernity for photos of "cats" just as I can on flickr. How does ipernity make money to support their site - do they sell advertising or do they just collect fees from those who use the paid version? Are they somehow less evil or are they just smaller?

I feel like I can totally protect any and all access to my photos if I pay a good amount for a service like Smug Mug or Zenfolio. I can do it with Flickr too, but I do have to specifically choose to make my photos private. Flickr is free, so they're making their money through something other than fees - I suppose it's all advertising. And, yes, if I have chosen to put public photos on Flickr and people come to see them and also see the adverts that Flickr sells, they're indirectly making money from my (and many others') creative efforts. But how am I harmed? I could create my own site and sell my photos and maybe sell ads and I'd be the ONLY one profiting from them (except the company I'd pay to host the site). In Flickr's case, they profit indirectly, but if I'm to profit from them by selling my photos, I'm more likely to sell more of them by virtue of the many eyeballs that see them on Flickr rather than the very very few eyeballs that would see them on any personal site I might create. So perhaps they benefit indirectly, but I'm in no way harmed and I may benefit too if the publicity I gain there helps me sell stuff. Not that I'm trying to sell any of my photographs, so I'm definitely not losing any sales from them. And to the extent I am somehow, does adding automated tags to my photographs somehow make it worse?

I guess I'm seeing about a million shades of gray here, rather than black and white, good and evil. Most hosting services are businesses and are trying to make some money. They have different models. All of them profit directly or indirectly based on the content of the people who use their service. Help me see the differences. If there's more here that I'm missing, I'm truly open to understanding it. But at this point, I don't.

Legend

Just to be clear, I'm NOT just raising rhetorical questions to make a point. I honestly don't get where the violation/invasion is. And I AM interested. If you can explain what it is about how Flickr monetizes that harms the end user and how tagging our photos makes it worse, I'm all ears over here. I might even end up sharing your concerns - there are all sorts of 'big brother' things that bother me and piss me off in a big way. Others don't. So far, this one doesn't, but if you can explain where you see the harm, I might change my mind... And, if not, at least I'll understand the specific concerns rather than just hear a lot of implications about how our ownership is being violated, as is our privacy. I'd really be interested in a more detailed explanation... If you feel like it...